How to satisfy the Farmers!
Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 7:46 pm
A lot of us had a good hard laugh when we saw the blog post about farming players not crops. We looked around our fresh world at every inactive player vanishing when they were farmed, every small player becoming inactive when attacked (since protection is ridiculously short for a new person, if they haven't figured out joining a guild), every barb being cleared and conquered and then no easy to move resources to actually speed up the competitive nature of the game.
That means we were slowly conquering away barb cities and then checking in periodically to upgrade buildings on them. Somehow that feels more like farming crops then the old days where I would log in every few hours and attack players and barbs to RAID the resources they had created, and build up my one city as fast as I could, training armies and racing to scholar so that I could get the leg up on conquering PLAYERS instead of BARBS. RAIDING (I resent the term farming) barbs let me get a competitive edge on players who just built up their cities (farmers?)
I find it ironic that the players we made fun of in the old worlds, were made fun of because they conquered barbs instead of just using them for resources, and in the new, "more competitive" worlds, if you don't conquer the barbs asap, you are at a huge disadvantage.
All that being said, I think the new barbs are pretty cool, however I think there needs to be a major change in how they operate:
Option One: Unlock transferring resources directly between player owned cities from day one. Its fine to leave it 2 weeks between players, but you should be able to help yourself immediately.
Option Two: Revise the way attacking barbs works slightly. Instead of when conquering a barb, having the influence reset to 50 and slowly rise (sped up by various factors), have it remain at 100 and slowly DECLINE over time (perhaps something like 10-20 per day) and if left uninfluenced by you, revert to its native form. You would influence it by either garrisoning troops there (leaving a certain amount of support there all the time, more required the higher the city hall), or by continuing to ATTACK the city. Yes you would have to be able to attack your own barbs, but this would allow you to transport resources one way back to your lord city.
If you think about how all the Lore works, option two makes so much more sense from a game-play perspective compared to current status. We should be able to keep using the barbs or have to keep troops on hand there to enforce our will. It would also bring back farming. From a strategy perspective you'd have to trade off building up the barb for your own farming vs. building up the wall and defenses for when others attack, etc. It also brings back raiding barbs a few times a day for those who want it.
That means we were slowly conquering away barb cities and then checking in periodically to upgrade buildings on them. Somehow that feels more like farming crops then the old days where I would log in every few hours and attack players and barbs to RAID the resources they had created, and build up my one city as fast as I could, training armies and racing to scholar so that I could get the leg up on conquering PLAYERS instead of BARBS. RAIDING (I resent the term farming) barbs let me get a competitive edge on players who just built up their cities (farmers?)
I find it ironic that the players we made fun of in the old worlds, were made fun of because they conquered barbs instead of just using them for resources, and in the new, "more competitive" worlds, if you don't conquer the barbs asap, you are at a huge disadvantage.
All that being said, I think the new barbs are pretty cool, however I think there needs to be a major change in how they operate:
Option One: Unlock transferring resources directly between player owned cities from day one. Its fine to leave it 2 weeks between players, but you should be able to help yourself immediately.
Option Two: Revise the way attacking barbs works slightly. Instead of when conquering a barb, having the influence reset to 50 and slowly rise (sped up by various factors), have it remain at 100 and slowly DECLINE over time (perhaps something like 10-20 per day) and if left uninfluenced by you, revert to its native form. You would influence it by either garrisoning troops there (leaving a certain amount of support there all the time, more required the higher the city hall), or by continuing to ATTACK the city. Yes you would have to be able to attack your own barbs, but this would allow you to transport resources one way back to your lord city.
If you think about how all the Lore works, option two makes so much more sense from a game-play perspective compared to current status. We should be able to keep using the barbs or have to keep troops on hand there to enforce our will. It would also bring back farming. From a strategy perspective you'd have to trade off building up the barb for your own farming vs. building up the wall and defenses for when others attack, etc. It also brings back raiding barbs a few times a day for those who want it.